Artists Create Boca Raton`s Look Of Future

November 22, 1985|By Jean Dubail, Staff Writer

BOCA RATON — How would you like to see the Boca Raton Hotel and Club`s pink tower looped by a two-lane highway? The Town Hall surrounded by skyscrapers? City beaches swept clear of buildings by a fierce hurricane?

That`s how the future looks to artists who entered a contest with the theme ``Boca Raton in the Year 2000.``

The contest was sponsored by Jerome Rogers, developer of the 1515 South Federal, the supermodern building going up at that address, and the Boca Raton Professional Artist`s Guild.

The top six entries will hang in the building when it is complete and the top six artists will share $2,200 in prizes.

Rogers also has promised to donate $1,000 to the Boca Raton Museum of Art.

The 27 works will be displayed over the weekend in wood-and-plexiglass cases at South Federal Highway and 15th Street. The winners will be announced at 1:30 p.m. Saturday.

Many of the entries manage to make the future attractive.

One, for instance, makes the city look like a cross between the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the Jetsons` cartoon apartment building. Another sees it evolving from pink stucco and barrel tile to steel and glass in an Art Deco green.

Other artists make the future seem less desirable, if only because they predict the collapse of the zoning code.

Those who fear the city will sprout mirrored skyscrapers and eventually come to resemble Fort Lauderdale will not be reassured by several works suggesting this is inevitable. Nor will they be comforted by the drawing of a city dominated by inverted ziggurats, even if they are beautifully drawn ziggurats and help form one of the show`s most intriguing works.

Then there are the works with messages that are less clear. The neo-Cubist basketball, for instance. Or the abstract mish-mash with little things that look like used Band-Aids.

``Some of these (artists) took a lot of time, and they put in a lot of detail,`` said Dave Madeiros, general manager of construction for the new building. ``Some of them,`` he added politely, ``you really have to use your imagination.``